The traditional method of cladding uses powder or a wire to provide a layer of cladding material over a substrate. The cladding layer may provide protections to the substrate, i.e., workpiece, such as, for example, corrosion and wear resistance. One traditional method of cladding a workpiece uses a gas-tungsten arc welding (GTAW) method to add the cladding layer. The tungsten electrode is used to create an arc and melt some of the workpiece creating a melt puddle as cladding material in the form of, e.g., a wire, is introduced to the puddle. The wire may be resistance-heated using a separate power supply. The wire is fed through a contact tube toward a workpiece and extends beyond the tube. The cladding material is melted and it and the workpiece form a metallurgical bond at the interface. Because there will be some dilution of the workpiece material into the cladding material, additional layers of cladding material may need to be applied before a “pure” cladding layer is formed and optimum protection is achieved, e.g., corrosion and/or wear-resistance.
As stated above, the wire and a portion of the workpiece are melted to form the metallurgical bond. As, in many applications, there is no mechanism to confine the melt puddle to a fixed area or boundary, the edges of the cladding layer will tend to flow over the workpiece and, once cooled, the edge may be rough and/or irregular. Although laser cladding provides greater control of the melt puddle, it still may be difficult to get the desired edge profile on the cladding layer using traditional cladding methods.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional, traditional, and proposed approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such approaches with embodiments of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.